The Bird’s Eye

The Bird’s Eye

It was early in the afternoon when I found myself looking outside the window from a pit of dispirited and quiet thoughts, and the sight of snow gently falling caught me off guard; Scenes of twisting alleys and houses with slapped on windows, rained on by beautiful, thick, constantly descending orbs. It was so peaceful that it gave my mind a temporary escape; it had cast me on a level where thoughts could not haunt me, where I was not so down on myself, where I was not caught in a dirty groove of thinking… this is life? This is the end of the road? I have to suffer more to settle in a temporary resting place? In building this road longer, to nowhere?

No. No, no, no. The sight of the falling snow, and the glowing furnace, and the stubby plant with its leaves peering above the windowsill made me think again. This is life. This is the warm roof above my head. This is the day for making good things happen. The building of the road is an exhausting, back-breaking, pioneering adventure.

The mental and literal road I drove on that day provided my thoughts more space to find positivity. I mulled on my relationships with other people, and mourned over the reality on how they sit stray. Everything is so shallow with my life and company. I find minor blockades in the way I engage other people, a lot of the time out of my control, which prevent me from having long-lasting friendships; perhaps caused by a past mistake, spiritual differences, a deep-rooted disagreement, or because of the way they look. I look down on people too much, but in this moment I looked down on my relationships from a different way; from the bird’s eye.

I am beginning to understand that every small talk, supper, night out, is a sliver of a grander picture; of everyone is a different story, heritage, religion or secularism, profession… we all make the world what it is. And what is to become of it.
How do I make my mark, how do I make myself a part of this grander picture? How do I burn out brighter, and not alone, corrupt, having caused more harm than good? What is my identity in all this?

Right now I am seeing how beautiful each individual is… even the ones I have hated and wrestle to accept. That they are their own soul, with their own struggle… with their own faction of who they represent, or are trying to find for their own… people trying to find their identity. And I am seeing that it is a glory to be a part of this world, to be a struggling individual. That it is a glory to be lost.

My identity is not in simple Judaism; my identity is in something much greater. The dreams I have and the place markers on my life’s timeline of what I hope to achieve is a story in the billions that make our constantly moving world, but not even this world makes my identity.

My identity, I am finding, is rooted in something much more grand than our humanity. It is not a suffocating enclosure, it is not a terrifying expanse; it burns like a warm fire, where my thoughts run to when I am feeling cold on the outside.